Managing the Mental Health Practice

Over the past decade or so, medical office training has become big business. However, few of those programs distinguish between medical office management and managing a mental health practice. While medical office management focuses a lot of attention on coding and billing procedures and multi-tasking phone lines and 15-minute appointments, managing a mental health practice requires excellent one-on-one people skills and the ability to handle constant upheaval. Due to the endless possibilities for the organization of a medical and mental health practice, the tips in this article focus on the outpatient private therapy practice.

A mental health practice does not require learning long lists of CPT (Current Procedural Terminology) and ICD (International Classification of Diseases)-9 or -10 codes. Unless there is a psychiatrist on staff, billable codes are very few. Although the ICD or DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) codes may be more lengthy, each mental health practice tends to have certain specialties preferred by the provider. Rather than the memorization skills needed for medical office management, managing a mental health practice calls for adaptability.

Patients seeking treatment at a mental health practice are generally there for three reasons: they have reached the “end of their rope” and are making a desperate cry for help; their children are out of control and causing the entire household to fall apart; they have been ordered to seek treatment by either the courts or an agency trying to help a dysfunctional person or family. All three of these scenarios have one thing in common – desperation. Understanding how emotional turmoil affects a person’s behavior is crucial to gaining and keeping patients in a mental health practice.

Waiting Room

Credit: Dave

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